by Jane Weaver, NBC News, March 12, 2018
After two fertility clinics in different parts of the country experienced “major failures” at the same time, there are growing questions about the level of oversight at egg-freezing facilities. On Monday [March 12, 2018], the industry group that inspects most fertility labs told NBC News that there’s no requirement for a clinic to report problems unless there is a complaint filed or a negative news media report. (https://tinyurl.com/yclnr4os)
by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, April 5, 2018
If—and that’s a big if—an embryo is deemed a person, then it could very well alter the practices of in-vitro fertilization clinics, which routinely create more embryos than are implanted into patients. And it will almost certainly alter the landscape of abortion politics. (https://tinyurl.com/y8zcq6bq)
In March, at two separate fertility clinics across the country, malfunctioning freezers resulted in the death of over 4,000 cryopreserved embryos. Neither clinic had undergone a safety inspection recently. Now, some families want to sue for wrongful death, but in order to do so, the embryos would have to be deemed persons. This would have profound implications for IVF practices as well as abortion laws.
by Sydney Maki and Alexandria Sage, Reuters, March 19, 2018
An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, police said on Monday, marking the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation. The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its self-driving vehicles, which are currently going on in Arizona, Pittsburgh and Toronto. (https://tinyurl.com/yaq2wynd)
A 49-year-old woman was hit by a car in autonomous mode while walking her bike outside of the designated crosswalk on a four-lane road. Much of the current ethical debate surrounding autonomous vehicles involve safety considerations, as well as liability concerns regarding who will be responsible when a vehicle makes a fatal decision and whether autonomous vehicles can account for unpredictable human behavior. Even though video evidence indicated that the accident may not have been avoidable, critics are concerned that Arizona lacks sufficient regulation for autonomous vehicles.
by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, March 29, 2018
In 2003, a local man who regularly scavenged La Noria [Chile] for historical trinkets found [the tiny] body of a girl.
This redemptive scientific narrative took shape, only to be punctured by a sharply critical editorial in Etilmercurio, a Chilean science website. Cristina Dorador condemned the DNA analysis as unethical given the origins of the girl’s body. “If samples are obtained unethically, any resulting science is not ethical, and as such, should not be published,” she wrote. Then, the gut punch: “Would these authors be happy working on the body of a surreptitiously buried child from Boston, MA or Santa Barbara, CA? Or are the ethics of working on children from less-developed nations less complicated?” (https://tinyurl.com/y7ynkgog)
An area of bioethics that has received more attention is the last few years is research on indigenous populations in the majority world. Past abuses and spurious ethical guidelines have caused many people to be wary of scientists from resource-rich nations. The case of the female baby corpse in Chile is one example of research that was done on a corpse that likely was obtained illegally. This also brings up ethical questions about the proper treatment of human remains among other dignity considerations.
by Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News, March 30, 2018
Six months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and its economy—and killing by some estimates at least 1,052 people—the daily indignities are piling up, especially for people who are frail or elderly. Many are finding their current economic straits nearly as threatening as the storm. The storm also crippled the island’s power grid, and as of Sunday 86,000 utility customers still had no electricity in their homes and businesses, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. (https://tinyurl.com/yacrzw53)
Disaster ethics is an important area of bioethics because regions hit by natural disasters or affected by war experience a unique set of vulnerable circumstances, particularly when it comes to medical care. Beyond the tragedy of 3,000+ deaths, many people remain without electricity, and suicide rates reportedly increased 29% in 2017 as a result of the hurricane’s devastation. Furthermore, the article notes that as government aid has begun to wane as the recovery proceeds, Medicaid and other healthcare services are being overhauled and in some cases phased out.
by Sophia Yan, U.S. News & World Report, April 5, 2018
Hawaii became the latest liberal-leaning state to legalize medically assisted suicide Thursday as the governor signed a measure into law allowing doctors to fulfill requests from terminally ill patients to prescribe life-ending medication. (https://tinyurl.com/y72vbhcr)
In the United States, Hawaii became the 6th state (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Last year, the law was passed in the Senate but was tabled in the state’s House. Some reports link an assisted suicide law to an increase in non-medical suicides. Hawaii has the highest rate in the U.S. of suicides for youth 10-24 years old.
by George Dvorsky, Gizmodo, April 19, 2018
The term ‘Asperger’s syndrome’ will never be heard the same way again, owing to new research showing that Hans Asperger—the Austrian pediatrician for whom the disorder was named—was an active participant in the Nazi eugenics program, recommending that patients deemed “not fit for life” be sent to a notorious children’s “euthanasia” clinic. New research published today in the science journal Molecular Autism shows that Asperger wasn’t the man he led the public to believe he was. (https://tinyurl.com/y86f92nc)
Every student of bioethics understands World War II as an example of a profound breech in medical ethics by doctors working in Nazi Germany. New research by medical historian Herwig Czech showes that Hans Asperger was a Nazi sympathizer who referred disabled children to a pediatric clinic in Vienna which performed eugenic killings. Between 1940 and 1945 over 800 children were killed at this clinic.
by Maria Cheng, Medical Xpress, April 20, 2018
In a rare series of moves, Dutch authorities are investigating whether doctors may have committed crimes in five euthanasia cases, including the deaths of two women with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. In one of the Alzheimer’s cases, which prosecutors began probing in September, a physician drugged the patient’s coffee without her knowledge and then had the woman physically restrained while delivering the fatal injection. (https://tinyurl.com/y9sl8hf9)
For the first time since euthanasia was legalized in The Netherlands, Dutch authorities conducted a criminal investigation into a doctor who drugged a dementia patient without her knowledge. It was reported that the doctor had the woman physically restrained by her family as he injected her with lethal drugs. Even though the patient had previously said she wanted euthanasia “when the time was right,” when subsequently asked, she said on several occasions, “But not just now, it’s not so bad yet!”
by Annabelle Timsit, Quartz, April 28, 2018
A baby boy named Alfie Evans died early this morning at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, England, in the pediatric intensive care unit that had been his home for the last 18 months. The life he lived for close to 24 months was mercilessly short, yet full of meaning. He didn’t know it, but he was at the center of a heart-wrenching debate about who should have final authority over children’s medical care: Parents, or the state? (https://tinyurl.com/y7cfhqm8)
Alfie Evans was a terminally ill British baby whose parents wanted to explore options for his care, but the hospital deemed his case futile. The hospital petitioned the British High Court to take Alfie Evans off of life support, but the parents objected, seeking permission to take him to Italy for treatment. At every stage of the legal proceedings, courts ruled in favor of the hospital based on protecting the best interest of the child. The situation provoked backlash from religious groups, including the Vatican, and from people in the U.S., where laws tend to favor parental authority in medical decisions on behalf of their children.
by Laurie McGinley and William Wan, The Washington Post, April 29, 2018
Hidden in that fat were stem cells with the amazing power to heal, the Stem Cell Center of Georgia had told Tyler. The clinic is one of hundreds that have popped up across the country, many offering treatments for conditions from Parkinson’s disease to autism to multiple sclerosis. Federal regulators have not approved any of their treatments, and critics call such clinics modern-day snake-oil salesmen. But on that day in 2016, Tyler trusted the clinic to extract stem cells from her fat and inject them into her eyes, where she was told they could halt or even cure the macular degeneration threatening her sight. Within months, she was completely blind. (https://tinyurl.com/y7qwaqy5)
At the time of the Washington Post article, there were over 700 stem cells clinics open in the U.S., most of which touted treatments that were not FDA approved. These clinics argue that they are not administering a drug and, therefore, are not subject to FDA regulations. Furthermore, they claim that patients have a right to alternative medicine. However, some patients have experienced adverse effects from these alternative therapies, and many have not seen the results that they were promised. The FDA has since cracked down on stem cell clinics, outlining standards for practice.
Nature, May 2, 2018
Last week’s arrest of a suspect in the Golden State Killer case in California has highlighted how DNA samples that have been volunteered for one purpose—in this case, genealogy—can be used for other reasons, often without the donor’s explicit consent. Several ethicists have expressed concern about US detectives using a genealogy website in this way. (https://tinyurl.com/ydbfhanz)
This past spring, police brought closure to a thirty-year-old cold case by employing an ethically questionable method. Using DNA data provided to a company to find out one’s genealogy, investigators were able to track down 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo and match his DNA to blood from the crime scenes. He was a former police officer and is associated with some thirteen murders as well as numerous rapes and burglaries that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. The case calls into question a person’s right to their genetic information and related issues concerning genetic privacy.
by Ray Downs, UPI, May 15, 2018
Gender discrimination in India kills 239,000 girls under the age of five each year, according to a study released Monday. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis said the causes of death were mainly due to unwanted child bearing and neglect. Over the past decade, an estimated 2.4 million girls under 5 lost their lives. That number doesn’t include abortions of female fetuses, which has contributed to a gender gap of 63 million more boys than girls in India. (https://tinyurl.com/ycd4mokc)
In India sonograms are illegal during early pregnancies, thanks to a law intended to curb gender-based abortions, a common practice in certain parts of India. However, studies show that even after girls are born, some die from neglect because parents will preferentially give boys food before girls or spend money on the boys’ medical care before caring for the girls.
